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Ben Lee

CEO and Co-founder of Neon Roots

Ben Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Neon Roots, a digital development agency with a mission to destroy the development model and rebuild it from the ground up. After a brief correspondence with Fidel Castro at age nine, Ben decided to start doing things his own way, going from busboy to club manager at a world-class nightclub before he turned 18. Since then, Ben has founded or taken a leading role in 5 businesses in everything from software development to food and entertainment.

Maintaining our position as a top Los Angeles mobile development shop can be really exhausting. It requires long hours, some sleepless nights, and occasionally skipping the weekend to meet a tight deadline. But it can’t be all work and no play. Sometimes we’ve got to step away from the computers and remember that we’re not just a company – we’re a family. And a family should know how to have a good time.

A “good time” barely scratches the surface. We had a blast getting together for our annual retreat; the first in beautiful Casa Los Jazmines, Colonia, Uruguay with the entire gang! We got to meet some new faces and enjoy the amazing hosting of our amazing Chef Tera. He prepared Sushi night where we all made our own cut rolls and hand rolls. And in proper style, we celebrated a classic parrilla, Uruguayan Asado (aka BBQ), as we call it, and invited our new friends, the CodeShaped team, for the last night.

We drank, ate, hacked, told stories, told jokes, came up with new nick names, and did a few roasts and toasts. We had our camera crew, Fito and Maxi, there the whole time to capture every piece of footage they possibly could. Of course we had the drones there as well, but our battery died so we had to rely more on the GoPro’s. Timelapses coming soon!

More importantly, we planned our third chapter of this book, our 3rd year as Neon Roots. Our internal focus, what’s coming up, and changes that are in process to make us better than ever before. We’re always improving and we’ll never stop learning.

In fact, at this latest retreat we learned a few things we weren’t exactly expecting.

Omar’s a DJ and expert Mixologist

Mojo is the best freestyle dancer, even when his back is injured

While we’re all fat from Tera’s cooking, iuval’s been maintaining his 6 pack

Floy’s a better driver than Martin.

Martin gets more tinder matches in Colonia, Uy!

Jun’s a flight risk (*TSA* *cough* *cough*)

It was an incredible time, but we think the pics speak for themselves.